Matthew Bey

Senior Global Analyst

Biography

Matthew Bey serves as a Senior Global Analyst at Stratfor. Mr. Bey focuses on a wide array of political and economic issues in the global system, including international trade, global finance and commodity developments. In particular, Mr. Bey has worked extensively on issues related to oil and gas politics in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, including how political risk affects global oil markets and companies operating in the region. He has also helped shape Stratfor's views on foreign trade relations between the United States and its primary economic relationships. In addition, Mr. Bey's focus areas include global competition between the United States and China across a number of fault lines, including technology, economics and trade.

In his work at Stratfor, Mr. Bey has been featured and cited by numerous newspapers and broadcasts from around the world. He also works directly to support Stratfor's strategic client relationships, delivering briefings and reports, covering a number of different sectors including oil and gas, finance and defense. Mr. Bey joined Stratfor in 2012 and holds a degree in mathematics from Texas Lutheran University and a master's degree in mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin.

A U.S. executive order and a new Commerce Department designation are both aimed at damaging China and its most globally competitive tech company, Huawei, reminding everyone that the antagonistic U.S.-China relationship goes far beyond a trade war.

Despite the recent renaissance in the relationship between Washington and Riyadh, long-term geopolitical shifts already underway will pull the longtime allies in different, often incompatible, directions.

President Trump is fixated by tariffs, but such measures are hardly the main barrier to contemporary global trade. And unless the U.S. updates its thinking, the rest of the world is going to leave it behind.

To exert leverage in upcoming trade negotiations, the White House must be able to back up its promises to impose penalties on what is says is unfair trade. The power to limit auto exports to the U.S. would fit that bill.

Checks and balances might keep the United States from withdrawing from the World Trade Organization, but that won't prevent the country from trying to undermine the international body whenever possible.

A report that China has inserted specialized chips on U.S.-bound hardware may not be fully accurate, but that's unlikely to stop Washington from capitalizing on the story in its trade war with Beijing.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is hoping to avert the latest wave of proposed U.S. tariffs, which take aim at the EU and global auto sectors. But with each progressive battle, the Trump administration's trade war is less about trade partners and more about trade itself.